Darryl Hannan

VURF recipient Darryl Hannan, Computer Science major, presented at the Villanova University Symposium in September 2017.

On his experience:

"This summer I had the opportunity to travel to New Mexico and conduct research at Los Alamos National Lab. I was part of the computer science division, working in the field of machine learning along with my professor, Dr. Ed Kim, and a Los Alamos scientist. It was a wonderful environment to do research. The lab is full of scientists with interests similar to my own. Yet, each person has a unique background and contributes novel perspectives to the problems they address.

I worked closely with a neuroscientist that changed the way I see my field of study. Previously, I viewed the study of machine learning as a computational/mathematical undertaking. After the summer, I see the importance of studying the biological underpinnings of the brain and using this information in conjunction with mathematics to construct new algorithms. My time at the lab happened to coincide with a machine learning summer school that the lab created for graduate students. I had the opportunity to participate in some of these activities. In particular, when I first arrived I attended quite a few lectures about various topics in machine learning. This short series of lectures was an excellent refresher and exposed me to some concepts that I wasn’t previously
familiar with.

The experience that I acquired this summer is invaluable. CRF’s support allowed me to not only reach my goals this summer, but to progress towards my long-term goal of getting a PhD. It allowed me to do work that I’m passionate about while learning new skills. I am extremely grateful to CRF for providing me with the research and travel grant."